Category Archives: Curtom Records

Curtis Mayfield has one of the most important legacies to black American music of his era. He was probably the first to fully recognize recording contracts in his day as a form of creative slavery. And formed his own label Curtom in the 1968. He inspired artists ranging from Stevie Wonder to Prince in terms of taking similar actions in their careers. By the time he began his solo career in 1970 with his iconic debut Curtis,he had already developed his melodic style of psychedelic funky soul into fine musical wine. And with each forthcoming album,his music just continued to develop in terms of breadth and scope.

Curtis’s choice of creative independence really paid off when he scored the 1972 Sig Shore film Superfly. It helped make Curtom an enormously successful indie label with it’s commercial success. Especially with Curtis’s songs for the album deliberately countering what he saw as the films promotion of cocaine. The next year Curtis released his fourth solo album Back To The World. It was a similar thematic concept to Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On-only as a third person perspective of the post Vietnam War America. The song that really pulled it all together for me personally is “Future Shock”.

The drums kicks off into full funkiness-with Curtis duetting with himself on deep wah wah and higher sustained guitar tones. This is accompanied with a phat bass line scaling down and back up in the opposite direction. The horn charts sustain heavily on the fanfaring refrain. The bluesy chorus and refrains have a very close relationship-with Curtis guitar tones,the bass line and the drums getting all of their melodic responses from the darting horns maintaining the heavy instrumental conversation. By the final bars of the song,the flute plays the gentler elements of the melody as it fades out.

“Future Shock” is a superb example of a funk era tone poem. Curtis’s lyrics declaring “we’ve got to stop all men from messing up the land” sets the tone for the songs lyricism. On the refrains he states poverty,apathy and racism as all being a sinister triad that’s keeping humanity from taking care of the planet Earth. It’s a message that resonates up to today’s climate change problem. Curtis literally makes his guitar whimper and weep throughout the song-setting up the tone poem by the musical tracks of his tears. And throughout the groove preaching the ecological gospel to the people.